Aleks

Missive for Sower Aleks Zelenko:

I would like to personally thank you for remaining here. While I understand that many in our order have their own missions to take care of, it’s alarming to see this city so close to empty of willing and able hands so soon after its near-destruction. The Invictan army is gone for now, but they may well be back someday – and in the meantime, we must rebuild. It’s good that you stayed. There’s much left for us to do.

But you must not let any more valuable items slip through our fingers so easily and willfully. I am not blind.

-Antonin

In the broken gathering hall

The smell of oil drizzled over bread and vegetables helped – a little – to cut through the pungency of ground-up stone and old stale blood. The oil was old, so its smell was a little weaker than it had been the last time Aleks had sat in this room, at this table – one of the few parts of the room that had survived completely intact. Aleks, through his Cultivation, held the roof above intact, while the stone slowly met with stone piece by piece, reached out and made new weaves, connections across the broken space, like thread at the end of a needle darting back and forth between two disparate pieces of a torn cloth.

In the same space where he sat last time, Stepan knelt over the table, taking in the destruction around him. The steam of the brew filled his face, and drifted to either side to cloak the faces of his companions. Kris, the one on his left had introduced himself as. And the other – Luca Buday – Aleks remembered from home, although he’d spoken to her only a few times in his life, and he’d only heard tell of her through the messages his father had relayed during the long days before the siege. Back when the southern Vale was still mostly free, and Carakhte stood unburnt. Luca was different – scarred, yes, a ragged dark mark through the palm and back of her hand, burns on the side of her face, but also standing a little taller, looking with a little more guile at the scene around her.

As always, Antonin Voloshko stood – stood alone – at the end of the table, one hand folded up into the depths of his sleeve, the other on one of the side-handles of the samovar. He tilted it slightly, and brew poured out into a cup, which he slid across to Aleks.

“I wanted to thank both of you. For coming here, and for helping with that.” He nodded up, noting with that enigmatic smile of his the slight perspiration on Aleks’ and Stepan’s brows. “I remember the last time we three met here. Well, that was under much better circumstances.”

“I remember the last time, too,” Stepan said, glancing to his right. Luca shrugged and did not meet his eye. “My daughters were with us, then. Now they’ve flown the nest.”

“Every child does,” Antonin said, his brow furrowing. “But it’s never late enough, is it?”

“It never is.” Stepan kept his voice practiced and level, and did not look all the way up at Antonin, though the latter man was taller, and standing straight.

The door sat slightly ajar, behind Antonin – with Aleks’ eyes right towards it. He glanced out toward the hall. Light, flickering from wall sconces, illuminated the stones and bounced off, creating a hard orange luminescence that filtered into the room, only to be outdone by the bright shine of the candles on the table.

Kris, his eyes wide and hands hesitant, curious, took a lump of the bread and dipped it in oil, then slowly took a bite. His face bunched up in confusion, followed by an admiration and pleasure he did not expect to feel. “Thank you,” he murmured hurriedly to Stepan. “You didn’t have to invite me, but I appreciate it.”

“I did, though,” Stepan said quietly, loud enough for Aleks to hear. Then he raised his voice for Antonin – though, Aleks assumed, Antonin would hear if he wanted to. “Antonin.” The dropped honorific hung in the air between them for only a second. Aleks thought perhaps he was the only one who took note of it. “Kris here is from a village in the Sibir. Sol’s light. He’s agreed to aid with the humanitarian effort here. But in order to do that, he’s going to need supplies. Assistants.”

Antonin nodded. “They’ll be provided,” he said. “And Luca – do you wish to stay? Perhaps to help young Kris with his medical practice? We all know, we certainly need all the help we can get in that department.”

“No,” Luca said. “I mean, yes. I wish to stay here. But I’m no good with medicine.” She held up her scarred hand, the fingers of which tremored in the candlelight, casting reflections like prism-rays around the room. Faint sunlight, filtering through the thin cracks in the stone that its dusty soul had yet to stitch back, joined the dance.

“That’s a shame,” Antonin said. “One of our volunteer medics just recently announced his intention to leave the city. He himself had little experience, you know, and he is blind – but he learned well enough. A tremor cannot stop you from caring for the wounded, or distributing medicine to the sick and infected.” He shrugged. “But I’ll not push you. If you wish to stay, you must contribute to the rebuilding effort in some way. But perhaps…”

“I’ll help rebuild. I’m not bad with, well, building.” Luca shrugged.

“Good.” Antonin smiled. “Now let’s get to the real business, shall we? I didn’t bring the three of you here just because I felt like sharing some good food with an old friend and a couple of strangers.” Antonin sat down at the table.

Through the ajar door behind Antonin, Aleks saw a shadow slip by. He tilted his head slightly, then flicked his gaze to the opposite wall when he saw who it was. Badem and Avishag, following their own shadows by inches, stepped lightly past the open door. Badem walked with a crutch, though he was not leaning on it too hard – and Avishag was carrying, with her good arm, a leather bag that Aleks thought he recognized. Through the opening, he saw the glint of steel, and the shape of a cog. He smiled and closed his eyes for a moment, while Antonin droned on about the humanitarian situation in the southern Vale.

Through mist and glass, Aleks saw them sitting in his workshop – for a moment he wondered how they’d gotten in, and then he looked a little further into the memory of the bag they carried, and recalled the key he’d given Avishag. Of course. Hadn’t he let her into his office so many times that it had gotten frustrating, all the times he came by to see her waiting outside, unable to enter? Had she known that he would eventually get tired of letting her sit out there for so long, waiting to be let in?

No use worrying. He’d already made his decision. He drifted out of the memory space, letting Avishag and Badem pack his backpack full of equipment and slip away unnoticed.

In the remains of the broken gathering hall, he refocused his mind on the walls and roof, and on Antonin’s droning words, directly mostly at the newcomers, not at Aleks who must have heard this all half a dozen times before. He met Badem’s eyes for half a second, and winked.

When the lunch was over, Aleks made toward the door, only to feel Antonin’s hand on his shoulder. “I wanted to let you know something,” Antonin said. “Come with me.” He led him down the hall, and when Aleks glanced over his shoulder, he saw that Amire was just behind him too. “I wanted to tell you both about this in confidence, because I trust you won’t go running off into the wilderness of Steriat without thinking first.” Antonin looked toward the doorway they’d come from and back toward Aleks and Amire, who moved in sync so their backs were to the wall, both crossing their arms, looking up at Antonin.

Antonin Voloshko sighed. “I know. And I am sorry for keeping your father out of this conversation, but he has a history of running into danger.” Antonin met Aleks’ eyes. “You’re smarter than that. You know to turn your back on danger, not show it your throat.

Aleks crossed his arms, eyes wary and narrow. “Say what you’re planning to say, why don’t you.”

“Hilda is in Steriat.” Antonin said it evenly, matter-of-fact.

“I know,” Aleks said, and it was true. He did.

“She has gone not only in search of disturbances, of Aether-Touched – but because she believes – as she has confided in me privately – that she is in danger of becoming unstable. I told her that there are people here who can help her to rein in the backlash of her powers, but that in some ways the damage is already done – it can be managed, it cannot be undone. She did not want to put the others at risk. So she left.”

“I know,” Aleks said, turning his head stiffly to the side, not meeting Antonin’s eyes. “I’m her brother, do you really think she didn’t talk to me before running off?”

Antonin’s lip curled upward in what Aleks thought might have been his too-quiet, too-cool-headed equivalent of a smirk. But he was already slipping out of his surroundings and into the recent past, in another place, through hours of Aether residue and wispy branches that reached under the ground and across the earth. He saw his sister leaning against the side of the inside of a train compartment, looking out the window. The train raced – clacking and clattering over heavy iron tracks – past a looming mountain, down which thin curtains of snow slowly sailed.

Lucian sat on the bench next to her, looking down the aisle. One hand across the back of Hilda’s neck, and over her shoulder. Aleks drifted from the vision and back into the world.

“Until, someday, she reaches the Well at the End of the World. And when that’s done, she said, she’ll come back.”

“And she’ll see us again.” Aleks nodded. “I talked to her too, Zil-Antonin. You needn’t assume that I don’t speak to my own family.”

“Well, I know things have been…” Antonin pursed his lips. “Strained between the three of you.”

Aleks pushed off the wall and unfolded his arms. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said. “If you’re not going to tell my dad what Hilda told you, then don’t. I won’t tell him either, at least not in so many words. I want him to stick around just as much as you want him around, even if the only reason you want him here is because he’s useful to you.”

“Aleks,” Antonin said, voice sharp as Aleks started to walk away. Aleks stopped and turned. Amire had already taken a couple of steps back away from Antonin, standing with most of his weight on one foot, glancing between the two others in the hall curiously.

“I have to think of the bigger picture,” Antonin said. “So I’m forced to make choices on the basis of what is most useful to me, yes. And what is most useful to the community.”

“I know.” Aleks nodded. “Don’t blame you either.” And he turned and walked away.

Afterwards, he sat in his garden, at the flowers flecked whose leaves dripped blood, and he let the comfortable shawl of the Sower’s Gift slip off his shoulders, dissipating into the Aether around him. He felt his grip on the Veil slacken, his fingers loosen, and his hands touched the earth and felt only dirt and tiny pebbles, the wriggling of an earthworm, the wetness of mud and blood.

Unburdened, unaided, he sat surrounded by tokens of new growth, the promise of future life. He sat and he cried, and his tears wet the backs of his hands, and he was truly a part of the world – a part of the ground, a part of the city, part of the Vale, even while it all moved around him, even while he understood – deep in every part of him – that he could not ever outpace the pain of existence, but could only move with it. For a year and more he’d stood impassive expecting his stance never to break. Now he let it, but he’d learned to catch himself when he fell.